


The Company They Kept

by Philosophizes



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Changes to In-Universe History, Gen, Human OCs - Freeform, Mutant Community, Mutant Pride
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-20
Updated: 2013-10-20
Packaged: 2017-12-29 23:24:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 14,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1011315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Philosophizes/pseuds/Philosophizes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Finland, Sweden, Germany, and Italy's lives in the MCU, from their sudden appearance in 1939 to their departure post-Chitauri.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. To War

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kila9Nishika](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kila9Nishika/gifts).



It was April 7th, which was fine, all well and good, it had been April 6th the day before- this was the proper order of events. They were in Stockholm, which was unusual but not unexpected, exactly; they’d had a get-together scheduled in Stockholm because as ridiculous as it was, Berwald and Timo had a bit of a parental instinct when it came to Europe’s other Totally An Old Married Couple and liked to check up with them in private every so often.

However, it was April 7th in Stockholm in _1939,_ which was _significantly less okay_ than everything else about this situation.

Feliciano had been the last to wake up, and, upon hearing the commotion about the date, refused to get out of bed. Ludwig was sorely tempted to climb back in with him, but that was too much like hiding; and he’d promised himself he would never hide from his past because hiding was denial and denial was _unacceptable._

He did manage to coax Feliciano into telling him that April 7th 1939 was the date of the Italian invasion of Albania, so Berwald and Timo ended up plying him out of bed with breakfast. After they’d eaten, they switched their clothes for period-appropriate things in the closets that fit no one properly, scrounged up two hundred and twenty kronor whoever owned the house kept hidden in the desk and bookshelves, packed up some of the pantry, and left before anyone could notice them.

Anything marking them as ‘modern’, besides their identification cards, was sunk in a rock-laden sack in the waterways crisscrossing the city. Berwald hunted down an out-of-the-way secondhand clothing store where they upgraded to clothes that actually _fit,_ even if they weren’t as nice; and then some options for lunch where they could sit privately and talk about everything.

One thing Berwald couldn’t find was his city house, and a quick excursion proved his country house was missing too, and that hanging around outside government buildings just got him suspicious looks from security rather than aides from the Prime Minister rushing outside to ask where he’d been all morning since he hadn’t been in on time for work.

Timo came up with the same results, and Feliciano went missing for an hour or so and came back from Venice looking a little sick, and Ludwig flatly refused to go anywhere near Germany.

-

May 22nd saw them still in Stockholm, with menial jobs and an apartment that wasn’t really meant to house four people. The League of Nations was quickly falling apart, Europe was gearing up for war, and Berwald kept the radio on low because Swedish was close enough to German for Ludwig to look guilty whenever the news came on.

Breakfast that morning was awkward, Ludwig and Feliciano unable to decide whether they should look at each other or not, Ludwig touching the Iron Cross under his shirt unconsciously every so often.

Timo was about to ask them what their problem was when he remembered: Pact of Steel.

-

Summer dragged in a sick tension and Ludwig stayed in on July 6th, retching in private in a way that had everyone worried maybe they were vulnerable to disease now, suddenly in this world where no one knew about Nations; except for that Feliciano had learned the ins and outs of the history of Nazi Germany by association and remembered about the final closings of Jewish businesses. Timo and Berwald left the other two alone that day to deal with Ludwig’s stress themselves.

It wasn’t as bad as September 1st turned out to be, though, because as the month turned everyone gave up on sleeping and eating. Feliciano started praying at 4:40 and Timo walked around in the morning dark of the apartment gathering blankets, but the weight and warmth didn’t do anything for Ludwig, who looked like maybe he started having flashbacks at 4:45, and they weren’t sure if he was actually feeling his army start to invaded Poland- the instinctual feel for what-should-have-been-their-citizens in this strange world cut in and out, and it was always weak.

Timo and Berwald sat silently together for another half-hour, until Feliciano had managed to wrap himself around Ludwig and they both looked coherent enough to talk.

“So what are we going to do?”

Ludwig looked haunted, Feliciano mentally crushed, and the lines of Berwald’s face were tight. Timo was too numb to process any facial expression he might have.

“We’ll be pretty safe here,” he continued. “Or we could go to Scotland or America. There’s time and we know where to avoid. We don’t have to stay. We don’t _have_ to fight.”

It sounded wrong as he said it- _not fight?_ They’d _all_ fought, they’d always fought, and he _knew_ what was going to happen to his people-

Ludwig just shook his head mutely.

“…We should,” Feliciano said hesitantly. “You two don’t _have_ to, but _we_ should. I think we… have to. I-I don’t want to join an army and I don’t want to kill my people, everything’s bad but they’re _my people_ and… Ludwig’s too, still. They’re bad and they _shouldn’t_ be and we won’t fight _with_ them but I _can’t_ stand on a battlefield and shoot _my own soldiers_ -”

“B’good at sabotage,” Berwald offered. “Selective targetin’.”

Feliciano perked up a little and nudged Ludwig, trying to prompt him into saying something.

“I know the orders they’ll give,” Ludwig said quietly, after a bit. “I know the supply stations and railroads. I… know the killing fields, that no one ever recorded, and the camps.”

“‘N I know my milit’ry stores,” Berwald told him staidly. “Guns ‘n bullets ‘n mines. Supplies.”

Timo started actually smiling.

“Can you find me a rifle and tree?” he asked cheekily.

“I’ve got th’rifle,” Berwald told him, face serious but amusement in his eyes. “If Ludwig’s got th’tree.”

“There are _lots_ of trees in Germany,” Feliciano said slyly.

So they went to war.


	2. East Front Angels

It was the _damnedest_ thing.

You went to bed, normal as you please, then when you wake up in the morning you’ve got the entirety of some backwater Czech or Slovakian or Lithuanian village milling about in your camp, going on about _something._

But you were in _Western Europe._

So then you called around, and found somebody who spoke Czech or Slovakian or Lithuanian, and through a farce of bad pronunciation, pantomime, and occasionally amateur art skills, you found out that _‘the Germans were coming up the road’_ or _‘the Russians had been here a few days’_ , but then _‘somebody started shooting from the trees’_ or _‘there was a man, he woke me up in the middle of the night’_ , and then, invariably, _‘the angels brought us here’_.

_Angels._

Bucky Barnes would have written it off as a prank played on new soldiers, a silly thing to give them hope after a few battles or maybe a cruel joke; but then one day he woke up in the middle of the night to an entire caravan, painted house wagons and horses, crying babies and grandmothers and all, smack in the middle of camp, making a racket in some language no one recognized.

Eventually, they got one of the men to talk to one of the officers, and all he would say was _“angyalok, angyalok vezetett minket!”_

_Angels, angels guided us here!_

\--

They were in some woods, and they were German woods, and that was all they really knew.

This was bad. Very, very bad; because they’d destroyed the HYDRA base well enough but completely missed their pickup, and, well-

There were _definitely_ people looking for them.

The Howling Commandos were holed up and there hadn’t been any indications of pursuit for most of the day, so it seemed safe enough to stop and strategize for a little.

_Seemed_ was of course, the operative word, so it took them almost-completely off-guard when a man with a couple very large bags tumbled down the sloping forest floor into their hideout. They’d had about a second’s warning due to the Captain’s enhanced senses, but it wasn’t enough to get guns on him before he stood up again.

He stared at them for a few moments, noticed the Captain’s incredibly obvious mission uniform, and asked: _“Americans?”_ in English that wasn’t exactly _wrong,_ per se, but sounded strange. A bit like Little Italy, now that Steve had a second to think about it.

“Er- _sei italiano_?” he managed.

The man beamed at him.

“ _Bene, bene_! _Capisci_!” he said happily, and grabbed Steve’s hands. Guns came up.

“Feli?” a rumbling voice asked, and the Commandos realized they’d been a _little_ surrounded.

“Berwald, look- I found Americans! All the way out here!”

“Y’might want to let go,” Berwald said; and Feli looked around at the Commandos and the guns and declared quite happily that the three of them were resistance fighters! And did they need help getting home? Because they could do that after they stormed the camp.

“ _What_ camp?” Bucky demanded, and Feli started babbling about concentration camps, and then had to explain to everyone what that actually was because no one knew, and by the time he was done with that he didn’t even _need_ to say they were on a rescue mission- the Commandos were _in._

So, _so_ in.

-

When the ‘resistance fighters’ had said they were going to storm Buchenwald, Steve hadn’t thought they’d meant it so _literally._ Especially not once they’d seen the sheer _size_ of it, and sure, the Commandos were seven guys who took out massive bases for a _job,_ but they’d had _briefings_ on that beforehand and a whole team of people behind the scenes.

They were _doing it,_ there was no question about that. Only he’d thought there’d be scouting involved.

But instead Feli and Berwald started unloading the bags and passing around a few extra guns and ammunition they were carrying, and Timo put a sniper rifle together faster than anyone had ever seen, climbed up a tree for a bit more unnecessary height, and started aiming without taking shots. Feli wrangled a piece of paper out of his pocket, unfolded it, and started pointing to things on it while Berwald tore the tops of the other bags open, revealing dynamite and mines, and checked his pockets for a lighter. He took a few quick looks at the camp and the paper, grabbed the bags, took a step towards Buchenwald-

And _disappeared._

The Commandos stared.

“Where did he _go?_ ” Morita asked after a minute.

Feli just rocked back and forth on his feet, smiling and humming happily.

“That’s the munitions factory!” he said cheerfully as a massive explosion lit up the night some awkwardly-silent minutes later. A series of shorter ones, just as loud, followed. “And the motor pool!”

Quieter booms broke the night air, and Timo started calling out what must have been numbers from his vantage in the tree. They meant something to Feli, who silently ticked them off on his fingers.

“ _Va bene_ , Timo!” he called after a while, and Timo started picking shots, the crack of rifle fire echoing in the woods.

It was getting a little unnerving, how much Feli smiled.

“All the mines went off,” he told them casually. “So we’re safe to go in! Everybody grab hands and get ready to shoot!”

Steve and his Commandos spared half a moment to exchange looks before following orders, and then just as suddenly as Berwald had disappeared they were at the back end of a mass of chaos and gunfire as Nazis scrambled everywhere, trying to deal with the sudden inferno from the factory and motor pool now threatening the command buildings and _whoever the hell was shooting at them._

Steve had his shield raised and was seconds away from giving the command to engage, when Feli shoved his gun at a startled Gabriel Jones, unsheathed what looked suspiciously like an M3 trench knife from the previous war, and started sprinting for the melee.

The only thought Steve had time for between giving the order and running with all his might to catch up was that there was something _seriously wrong_ with these ‘resistance fighters’ for them to just run straight into danger with minimal preparation- but then he saw Feli break a man’s ribcage when he pulled his knife out of his back, and crush another’s skull in with as much effort as it took _him_ to crumple a paper ball-

So maybe they weren’t as unprepared as he’d thought; though they were certainly a lot more brutal than he’d expected.

-

Events were blurry for a while, but one moment stood out to him.

He’d just finished punching someone in the face with his shield, and then over the top edge he saw a man he thought was Berwald, laying out anyone in a Nazi uniform left and right. It was astonishingly violent and bloody, and suddenly he realized not-Berwald was screaming in German, and he knew only enough of the language to pick out _‘honor’_ and _‘shame’_ and _‘betrayal’_ before there was suddenly no one between him and the other man.

Steve had a moment to look him over the same was done to him- not-Berwald was… well, _incredibly_ German. He looked like a propaganda poster, and Steve had a moment to sympathize about that.

Not-Berwald gave him a strange look, then caught a man’s face in his open hand and sent him slamming into the ground to crack his head open, and they were back to fighting.

-

Eventually it ended.

The Howling Commandos rounded up the few remaining soldiers and herded them into the quarry at gunpoint. Dugan found enough rope to tie everybody up, and the whole squad helped while the cracks of mercy kill shots echoed from the main battlefield as the ‘resistance fighers’- and Steve felt the mental quotes were entirely justified at this point, he was having _serious_ doubts about these people- finished off the ones who would have lingered for hours or days before dying anyway.

It was getting close to dawn, and somehow no one had sent reinforcements. Bucky commented on it when they regrouped, and Timo just smiled and said they were probably too busy with Weimar to notice the factory explosion, even though that part of the camp was still pretty obviously on fire.

Steve made a mental note to get somebody to tell him about Weimar when they got back to base.

Feli cheerfully introduced not-Berwald to everyone as _‘my friend Ludwig!’_ and clung to him a little more than was probably decent; but Steve wasn’t going to say anything and he knew Bucky wouldn’t either, so the rest of the Commandos stayed silent as well.

Then Ludwig broke open the gate to the prisoner’s barracks, and-

It was bad. It was bad, but it was easy for them all to see how it could have gotten _much_ worse and that was more terrifying than anything they knew about HYDRA.

“How are we getting all these people away?” Dugan murmured after they’d opened a few of the buildings holding prisoners. Because _by God_ they were going to do it or die trying, but they were kind of in the middle of north Germany right now and had blown up all the trucks and cars and one of Berwald’s mines had torn a hole in the station rails.

Timo adjusted the strap on his gun.

“Where’s your base camp?” he asked, Steve told him, and then Timo grabbed him and Bucky and they were _there._

They severely startled Colonel Phillip’s aide in the process, and under a minute later Agent Carter and the Colonel were pointedly _not running_ towards them, but Howard Stark _was,_ and most of the camp was staring at little Timo with his poofy ash-blond hair and sniper rifle and well-worn, probably-stolen hodgepodge of field fatigues from six different armies who had just appeared out of _nowhere_ with Captain America and Sergeant Barnes.

Stark was going on about something, and then Carter and Phillips arrived, and before anyone could say anything, Steve gave the Colonel a very pointed look.

“Did we _know_ about the concentration camps?” he asked too-evenly, and loudly enough for everyone nearby to hear.

The Colonel’s silence said more than words ever could.

“Well,” Steve said coldly. “We’ve got a lot of liberated prisoners-”

“A few thousand from Buchenwald,” Timo cut in helpfully.

“-who are going to be coming through shortly. We’ll need food and blankets and transport back to England-”

“We can’t-” Stark started, and Timo fixed him with a purple-eyed (purple eyes, how had he _just_ noticed that) Look, and stepped back to Buchenwald.

-

The rest of the day was a mass of controlled confusion as Feli, Berwald, Timo, and Ludwig brought the prisoners from Buchenwald back in groups of ten or fifteen at a time. Ludwig had the last group in the early evening near dinner, thirty in all, including the rest of the Commandos who’d stayed to help organize. He just about collapsed in the dirt when they appeared, but Dernier caught him before he could. He regretted it almost instantly- Ludwig was _heavy_ \- but Dugan helped and they got him dragged to their little portion of camp, just as full of refugees as the rest, and left him with his friends.

Steve had spent most of the day arguing with officers, who in turn argued with each other, and around dinner somebody had rustled up one of the generals on a phone line and Colonel Phillips dragged him out of the command tent, Agent Carter and Bucky on their heels.

“Where did you _find_ these crazies, soldier?” he demanded.

“Ran across them in the woods, sir,” Steve told him. “After we misplaced our pickup, we hid out from the HYDRA soldiers while we tried to find a way home. Feli stumbled into our camp, and things just progressed from there.”

“Well who are they _with?_ ”

“They said they’re resistance fighters, but I have some _serious_ doubts there, sir, because organized resistance cells would advertise if they had one person with the abilities they do, let alone four, and then we would have heard about it. I know Feli is Italian and Ludwig is German, but I don’t know where the other two are from, or how they do what they do.”

“I think we found our East Front Angels,” Bucky said suddenly.

Steve and Agent Carter looked at him, confused.

Colonel Phillips’s expression narrowed and he growled a little, wordlessly.

“It makes sense, sir,” Bucky continued. “It happened at one of my camps- an entire caravan appeared overnight, saying angels saved them. It’s not much different than what happened today.”

There was a hard silence for a moment, then Phillips ordered Steve and Bucky back to the Commandos to pick up their guests.

And the Army was furious, the SSR was majorly disappointed, and Howard Stark spent the next week muttering about foreign scientists and mutants taking over the world, but the fact of the matter was that by the time Steve and Bucky had gotten back to the Commandos’ tents, the ‘resistance fighters’ had disappeared.

The SSR sent agents out, but no one ever saw anything; not even when half of Dachau and portions of various ghettos kept turning up in liberated Paris, or when the Soviets descended on Auschwitz-Birkenau and the IG Farben factory was a smoking hole in the ground and the prisoners had turned the camp into a fort because the all Nazis had spontaneously contracted cyanide poisoning on the same night, right after a new trainload of prisoners, but the Soviets couldn’t make them budge to confirm the fact because clean water and food kept appearing miraculously in the kitchens each day.  

And the East Front Angels passed into the legends of history.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Sei italiano? (Italian)_ \- Are you Italian?  
>  _Bene, bene! Capisci! (Italian)_ \- Good, good! You understand!  
>  _Va bene! (Italian)_ \- Okay!


	3. The Men on Ashland Avenue

Technically, Ludwig reflected, they were illegal immigrants.

It grated on him a little, when he thought about it, but nobody in Chicago was talking. They lived in West Town, just south of Union Park, with the Poles and Ukrainians and second- and third-generation Germans and Scandinavians up the road, Little Italy and Greektown just down it.

And the newest group of immigrants, the Displaced Persons, knew their faces from the war. So while Ludwig and Berwald could only manage simple conversations in heavily-accented Polish and Timo spoke Russian, close enough to Ukrainian but not quite right, and Feliciano sometimes had a bit of difficulty keeping his head in the right language-

They were accepted.  

Feliciano was welcome in the cathedrals on North and South Ashland Avenue, and Timo helped the Ukrainian women with the washing and the cooking and sick children; Berwald worked construction jobs and fixed doors and windows when the neighborhood landlords refused to pay, and Ludwig came to know everybody’s faces and gained a passable ability to converse in languages he’d only ever known by sound before as he made bread and pastry and specialty deliveries.

They were pulling four decent incomes, and could survive on less food than any human- and other people needed it more.

Soon enough, the best piece of advice newcomers to West Town could get, and the advice that meant they’d been accepted, was _‘you have a problem, you go see those men on Ashland, this side of the rails on the other end of Union Park. They’ll help out’_.  

They said the same thing in the Near West Side, except there they were on the other side of the rails and this side of Union Park.

If you couldn’t afford food, you went to the men on Ashland Avenue. If you were low on money, you went to the men on Ashland Avenue. If you couldn’t find a place to sleep, the men on Ashland Avenue would put you up. If you’d been kicked out of the house, then men on Ashland Avenue would have you in until you figured things out.

Been bullied? Timo on Ashland Avenue would show you how to defend yourself against anyone, any time, in any situation.

Unlucky in love? Berwald on Ashland Avenue would be there with a quiet acceptance, a little chocolate, and something to pound on if necessary.

Sudden emergency? Ludwig on Ashland Avenue would be there in ten minutes to watch children and keep apartment for the day, no questions asked.

Trouble of a nefarious nature? Feliciano on Ashland Avenue would come down and Have Words with the nefarious, and things would be settled.

-

It was 1965 and the men on Ashland Avenue had been a fixture in West Town and the Near East Side for thirteen years. They’d seen children grow into America and now _their_ children ran in the streets after school, young and without the weight of the world their parents and grandparents had faced. Life was… decent, in their little corner of the world. There were race riots and corrupt police and politicians, but they weren’t _here,_ specifically; and they’d carefully fended off the worst of McCarthy.

 The families with money were moving out and the families without money were staying and every year the apartment at Ashland Avenue gave out a bit more money, a bit more food, but now they had a car and they gave rides to hospitals and schools and jobs and helped young people move away from home for the first time and into their own apartments. Every year there was more English than before; and sometimes the brighter young ones would ask _‘the men on Ashland Avenue, why don’t they look any different from when I was five?’_ , and their parents wouldn’t talk about it.

But Ludwig still baked for the same shop and Berwald still built but for the railroad now; and Timo worked on a cruise boat on Lake Michigan serving the rich and Feli worked at The Shrine of Our Lady of Pompeii on West Lexington and didn’t talk about how it reminded him of his brother.

-

It was coming back from West Lexington, cutting through Garibaldi Park to Ashland and the railroad, that Feliciano ran across the child being stoned. He wouldn’t have heard if he hadn’t stopped at the Guiseppe Garibaldi Monument to think a few moments on the world he and Ludwig and Berwald and Timo had lost, so suddenly.

But he heard enraged _“mutante, mutante!”_ from in the trees, so he followed the sound and found some of the older children throwing rocks at another, and he recognized Isabella Noschese from West Cabrini and usually he’d see her when she came for lessons at the Our Lady of Pompeii but she hadn’t been in and when he’d called her parents they’d said she was sick and wouldn’t be coming back, and it had bothered him but he hadn’t gone down yet to see what she could have been so sick with.

And now he had “ _mutante, mutante!”_ ringing in his ears, and Isabella flinched further against the tree and flung a hand out and the newest wave of rocks hit an arc of light that followed the motion of her fingers and they disintegrated, the trees lighting up in sharp monochrome at the flash of brilliance; and he knew what Isabella’s parents had actually meant when they said ‘sick’.

That made him _angry._ Maybe it was a little unfair to expect that the residents of Little Italy knew about what the men on Ashland Avenue could do, they hadn’t been saved during the war, but they should know about _familial duty_ and _basic kindness._

So he yelled at the children, Italian harsh enough that they flinched a little, and he chased them off with vague threats and implications, and talked softly to Isabella until she let him come close enough to pick up, and then they were in the Ashland apartment and Feliciano was calling for Ludwig and Timo and Berwald and ice and bandages and soothing food. They got her fed and cleaned and Timo showed her his purple eyes and said her glowing ones were beautiful, and she fell asleep on the couch.

-

In the morning, a contingent from Little Italy had gathered outside the street door into the apartment building, and Feliciano had to go down and scream at them in the street for half an hour before they’d _move;_ and by that time word had traveled up the neighborhood and people were coming to see what the men on Ashland Avenue had gotten themselves into.

_Mutante_ was enough of an English cognate to send some people back up the street muttering; and eventually the older generations of Poles got a hold of the news and came down themselves to Have A Talk with the Italians, and by the end of that mess whoever didn’t know about what the men on Ashland Avenue could do knew _now,_ and it only broke up when people heard that the police were coming. 

In true neighborhood fashion, no one actually cooperated with the police, but the news traveled fast enough that the West Towners who worked with the South Lawndale Poles all the way out by Cicero had heard about it, and they said _they’d_ heard it from the Mobsters in Cicero.

Timo came back from the cruise ships on the Lake two days later jobless, without his paycheck, and the news that the word about _‘those mutie fags on Ashland Avenue’_ had transcended class boundaries.

-

They traded the car they had for a used GMC G-Series van, because even Ludwig couldn’t look at the Volkswagen Type II without thinking of hippies. Feliciano had resigned from Our Lady of Pompeii the Sunday after the Incident to stay out of a hostile Little Italy so they were down to half the income they were used to; and Ludwig left his job at the bakery mid-May with a pretty severance pay, because though the customers might have started treating him differently, the Miazgas still considered him one of theirs.

They didn’t renew their rent at the end of May, and the day Berwald came home with his last paycheck they packed up the van, bundled Isabella and the Miazga’s eldest, Aleksey, into the back, accepted the Miazga’s gifts of food, drove to the bank, cashed the paycheck, and drove east out of Chicago with strict rules in place prohibiting light shows or transfiguration in the back seat.


	4. The Matagamon Mutants

Rumor had it that, if you really, truly had no place to go, if the world had turned on you because of who you were or what you could do and especially both, there was a van that sometimes parked around back of The Cathedral of the Holy Cross within sight distance of the park in Waltham Square.

Ingmar Zíma was really, really hoping he could catch it tonight.

He waited out in the dark and listened to the Boston South End traffic, desperately hoping that the police wouldn’t swing by on patrol or something.

The van appeared around eleven; and Ingmar couldn’t afford to have any misgivings about how shady this kind of was. He crossed the Harrison Avenue and Union Park intersection and sidled up to the van.

A woman’s face appeared in the passenger’s window and knocked on the glass, startling him. She gestured towards the back hatch and Ingmar followed her there.

“Hey,” she said, popping the back of the van. “Here for a pick up?”

“I- are you the ones who take-”

“What’s your story?” she asked, and suddenly Ingmar was too nervous to say anything, what if he’d gotten the wrong people-

“Oh, never mind,” the woman said. “I can read it on your face. Get in.”

Ingmar scrambled in the back and tried not to step on anyone.

“Our driver for this evening is Aleksey,” the woman told him. “That’s Mlyarnik up with him, and I’m Wekesa. You almost tripped over Kuzey and Pascal there, grab one of Kirby’s extra blankets and settle in. We’ve got a long drive.”

-

The drive took three days, in the end. It turned out Kuzey and Pascal and Kirby were new too, and had heard the same stories Ingmar had. He wondered about that some, how he and Kirby could have heard the same story when Kirby was from all the way out by Tallahassee. Kuzey and Pascal were New Yorkers, but Pascal was from Rochester and not New York City like Kuzey. From what they could figure out, the van went _everywhere_.

It did have Maine plates though, and on the third day the _‘Welcome to Maine’_ sign flashed by in the early hours of the morning.

Mlyarnik took over driving from Aleksey after lunch, and all Aleksey would tell them was _‘we’re all queer or mutant or both in this van, you’ve got common ground, talk it out so I can sleep’_.

He turned some of the trash into a pillow that looked surprisingly comfortable and commandeered a section of floor for the rest of the trip.

It was dark when Mlyarnik took them off whatever road they’d been on and turned down a dirt path that didn’t seem like it should be big enough for a van, and stopped in front of a high gate. She got out and pushed a button.

They waited a few minutes, and a woman in her late twenties and a tightly-cinched trenchcoat walked up the forest path, eyes glowing, and opened the gate for them.  Mlyarnik drove through and pulled into a gravel lot next to a brand-new, classy BMW E24 that looked deeply out of place next to the old Chevrolet coupe already there and the motorcycle chained to the lamppost. Ingmar thought that the van looked pretty dingy in comparison.

The woman in the trenchcoat helped them pile out and woke Aleksey up, then took them all up another path to what looked suspiciously like a refurbished camping ground. She took them into a colonial-style house with a wraparound porch and sat them down on some couches.

“Aleksey’s back!” she called into the rest of the house, and wandered away.

Shortly, a man showed up with hot chocolate.

“Hi!” he said, passing the mugs around. “I’m Timo, and this is Grand Matagamon.”

“Are we camping?” Kirby asked suspiciously.

“No,” he told her gently. “Living. This is a free community.”

“Are you hippies?” Pascal asked suspiciously.

“It’s the van, isn’t it? No, we’re _different_ here. We take runaways. Queer ones, mutant ones, anyone who will live with us- this is just a safe place for people who might not have one otherwise.”

-

Ingmar had his suspicions about Grand Matagamon actually being a former campsite confirmed when he saw it in the morning for the first time. Breakfast turned out to be communal, and held a bit late- apparently not everyone liked to get up with the sun.

Introductions were made all around- the woman from last night was Isabella, and she and Aleksey were something like senior community officials. They’d been here longest. Wekesa kept prodding Mlyarnik awake over the coffee; but it had been Mlyarnik who coined the term ‘Matties’ for the residents. There were other names, other Matties, but they hadn’t really stuck yet-

Timo’s had, though, and the others were more than happy to spill on him and his… friends?

They were the camp founders. Isabella and Aleksey had been with them since they’d started out, rescued from Chicago just over a decade ago. They were always talked about in pairs, Timo-and-Berwald, Ludwig-and-Feliciano. It was Ludwig-and-Feliciano’s BMW in the lot and Timo-and-Berwald’s Chevrolet. The motorcycle was Mlyarnik’s and technically Berwald owned the van, but Isabella and Aleksey were the ones who really used it now. Ludwig made cakes and Feliciano was in charge of the coffee. Berwald had built almost all the furniture himself and done most of the repairs on Grand Matagamon. Timo had been the one to find the site, abandoned on the border of public land and Mt. Katahdin National Park. Feliciano would teach you how to swim in Grand Lake Matagamon half a mile down the road if you asked nicely and were willing to get completely _owned_ in the water.

Isabella said they hadn’t aged in a day in the dozen or so years she’d known them, and Aleksey swore up and down that his father had always told him they’d been resistance fighters in World War Two, and even met Captain America; but Ingmar and the others were less inclined to believe that. Mutant powers were one thing, being sixty-something and looking twenty-something was another.

But they could get used to this place.

\--

“There’s somethin’ _weird_ in Maine. Been somethin’ weird up there for as long as I can remember hearin’ ‘bout mutant kids.”

It was a line Charles Xavier had been carrying around in his mind for years, unable to forget. He couldn’t dismiss anything he heard about mutant children, not after William Stryker and his experiments.

It took careful tracking, and it took years, because there _was_ something in Maine- something large and looming, something that his mind absolutely refused to let him touch. Whatever it was, it psychically blacked out most of the state and parts of Canada and New Hampshire.

So eventually he heard about the van.

It didn’t take long for Jean to catch on- she was sharp, and her powers well in-tune with his own.

“I can go,” she said, all of sixteen and ready to take on the word. “It runs on a schedule, it’ll be in New York City next and I can catch it. You’ll be able to hear me the whole time and I’ll ditch them at a pit stop and get a bus back once they tell me what’s going on.”

He was _not_ having Jean out in New York City alone, waiting for a van full of strangers to take her away; and told her so in no uncertain terms.

Two days later she was missing and reached out mentally to him from Christopher Park in the city.

_I’m fine, word has it the van will be around tonight.’_

And there was nothing he could do but sit, and wait, and deflect Scott and Ororo and Hank’s questions and _focus,_ determined not to let Jean slip from his sight.

-

_'We’re headed to New Haven next,’_ Jean told him the next morning. ‘ _There’s this guy Kuzey driving-_

He got a mental picture of a Turkish man, mid-thirties, in the driver’s seat of a van so old-fashioned he was surprised it was still on the road.

_-and we picked up a girl called Minh in New York too. Kuzey says there’s a guy called Shandar in Worcester but we’ve got to do the New Haven pickup first.’_

They were on the highway all day, only stopping in New Haven around lunch to grab food and pack a boy who gave his name as Eustaquio into the back with Jean and Minh. They reached Worcester late at night, and Jean managed to send a quick mental flash of a young girl Shandar introduced as Feraha, and Shandar exchanging a kiss with Kuzey as they switched out the driver’s seat before she fell asleep.

She woke up back in New York state and that day’s stop was Albany and a young man named Gerald. She dozed through a lot of Vermont, missed it when they got Nicole in Montepelier, and only woke up, stifling a scream, when they got close to White Mountain National Forest near the New Hampshire-Maine border.

There was an intense psychic weight that woke her suddenly, mind shutting down completely in self-defense, cutting her off from all the telepathy she’d ever had. For the first time she could recall, she couldn’t feel Professor Xavier. The other occupants of the van spared a look for her when she woke the way she did, but they put it down to nightmares and didn’t press when she didn’t say anything about it.

-

Jean felt worse and worse the longer she went with the weight bearing down on her. It felt _wrong,_ the mental presence of Charles Xavier meant _‘home’_ and _‘safety’_ and now she was missing that.

They had brunch in Bangor and somebody called Faust hopped in the van with them. She got the impression that Faust was like Kuzey and Shandar, in charge of this operation somehow, but she couldn’t get up the will to focus.

The rest of Maine passed in a blur, and she might have been passed out for some of it; it was hard to tell, the psychic _strangeness_ was bearing down on the parts of her mind that didn’t have to do with her powers as well.

It was too early for dinner but too late for lunch when the van turned and Faust started getting them together for what must have been the end of the journey. People kept jostling her, trying to get her to focus, but it was _hard._

Eventually there were trees and gravel and Shandar was dragging her out of the van and into a colonial house. He laid her down on the bed and called for somebody- everything was fuzzy, and it _hurt-_

Someone entered the room and everything got exponentially worse, and she _screamed._

-

When she came back to herself, the first thing she heard was someone saying: “Thank you, Rangi” softly. Hands she hadn’t noticed were lifted away from her, and someone walked away.

“Who are you?” the voice asked, still soft.

“Jean Grey,” she said hoarsely.

“I’m Ludwig, Jean. How are you feeling?”

“I-”

She tried reaching a little, tried to exercise her power, but trying made her shudder all over as it refused to work and curled up tighter in her mind. The wrong was still there, and so _close-_

“-my, I’m psychic, and my power-”

“Ludwig?” someone else asked, and Jean turned her head away and buried her face in the couch cushion, a high whine escaping. More wrong.

“Jean? Does this happen often?”

“No, no, it’s something here, it’s- it’s-”

She forced herself to turn her head back and open her eyes, to look-

Ludwig was a large man in a chair next to her. The man behind him, in the doorway, could be his twin brother. And the _feeling_ she was getting from them-

“It’s you!” Jean said, sounding frantic even to herself. “It’s _you_ my powers won’t let me touch you _it doesn’t like you_ please _please_ let me leave-”

“But where would you go?”

And she found herself talking about everything- about leaving her parents’ house, and going to Westchester, and the other children at the school, and Professor Xavier, and William Stryker, and coming to spy on them…

\--

The BMW was old, but well-kept, and Charles Xavier could feel the psychic blackout in it, a smaller version of the power in Maine that had suddenly contracted earlier that day and now merely covered the middle section of the state.

He would have gone down to meet the car by himself, but a storm was brewing and Scott had very pointedly shown up in his office, made a passing remark about Ororo and how much she liked the roof, and when Hank appeared in the hallway behind Scott Charles sighed a little to himself and the three of them went out to the front landing together and watched the car pull up.

The car stopped at the foot of the Mansion stairs and two men got out. The one on the passenger’s side, closest to the steps, pushed his chair down and helped Jean climb out.

Scott sighed audibly at that, and Jean was a little unsteady on her feet coming up the stairs alone, but she made it.

“Scott, take Jean back inside,” Charles ordered. A quick touch of his mind to hers showed him the walls he’d put around her power straining under pressure, ready to break and flood everything nearby in psychic chaos. She needed to sleep, and let her subconscious deal with repairing things.

He tried reaching again, for the men, and at this close range he got a strong, instinctual reaction of _NO DON’T DON’T LOOK_ ; and let it drop.

They’d brought Jean back- that said something, at least, for their characters.

-

He sent Hank up to get Ororo down from the roof and return the weather to its original pattern.

The men he invited inside for coffee.

Feliciano radiated kindness in personality and expression, if not his mind; and Ludwig might be made of sterner stuff, but not when Feliciano decided to cuddle.

They talked, for a long time, about Grand Matagamon and how long they’d been running it- near thirty years now- how they’d spread the word underground, the people they’d taken in; everything except personal details.

They seemed to be fine enough people, and certainly kept off the topic of personal things well- he was not getting any answers on what their mutations did, or where they’d been before, or just how long they’d lived- but by the time they left Charles had the phone number for the camp and instructions to ask for Isabella Nochese or Aleksey Miazga when he called, and they’d talked some about having Xavier’s students at Grand Matagamon for excursions and sending Matties down for more schooling.

When Hank came back from checking Grand Matagamon out, a couple weeks later, he reported that Ludwig and Feliciano and the other two men, who’d founded the camp and made it a safe place for mutants and ‘people like the two we saw’, had cashed in Feliciano’s stock finaglings, left instructions about good things to invest in and a modified pickup schedule, bought the Matties a new van, said their goodbyes, and driven away in their cars.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mutant Slang Terms
> 
> Bro: a mutant who aligns with the ideology of the Brotherhood of Mutants  
> Camper: a homeless mutant; or a mutant who associates with Matties and/or the Matagoman approach to living as a mutant  
> Genie: general slang for a mutant; wordplay on ‘gene’ and the idea of power  
> GY: abbreviation for ‘Gifted Youngster’, a student at Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters  
> Mattie: a resident or former resident of the Grand Matagoman community  
> Magnet: a member of the Brotherhood of Mutants; refers both to Magneto and the way they attract trouble  
> Mute: a mutant who isn’t out about their powers, or who doesn’t have any physical signifiers of mutation   
> Mutie: a slur for mutant; has a small group calling for its reclamation  
> No Bro: a mutant who no longer aligns with the ideology of the Brotherhood of Mutants, or more specifically an ex-member of the Brotherhood. Comes from an anecdotal tale about an ex-member who replied to community questioning about being a member with ‘No, bro’  
> Screamer: a mutant who is completely out about their powers, who can’t hide the physical signifiers of their mutation, or a mutant rights activist  
> Stitch[mouth]: a derogatory term for a mutant who took ‘The Cure’; stitchmouth specifically refers to someone who left the mutant rights crowd  
> Westie: a Xavier graduate  
> Whistler: a mutant who is partially out about their mutation, doesn’t really care about it, or who can hide the physical signifiers of their mutation  
> X-ie/Eksie: a mutant who associates with GYs and Westies and/or aligns with Xavier’s ideology


	5. Foreign Soil

They’d thought about New York and dismissed it for the time being- they’d have looked for apartments near Greenwich Village and Little Italy and Grand Matagamon had a pick up smack in the middle of the area.

So they kept driving south, and eventually ended up in Maryland, closer than they’d been to a national government since Stockholm. Ludwig said DC was _too_ close and Timo thought Baltimore was too obvious, and Feliciano was still very taken with naval enterprises, so Berwald found them a house for rent on one of the backwoods roads across the Severn River from the Naval Academy, and Feliciano laid a half-faked paper trail of jobs they’d actually had and college degrees they didn’t, and they moved in in the late 90s. Ludwig got a secretarial job at St. John’s College, Timo went back to serving rich people on boats, Berwald fixed the rich people’s boats, and Feliciano entertained tourists in the summer on the trolley tours for a few years before wrangling a low-level job at the Naval Academy.

Ludwig had grumbled a little about that, because what if someone noticed something off or someone tried to run a background check, but Feliciano would beam and talk about sailing and battles on the Mediterranean and Ludwig wouldn’t have the heart to go on.

-

In Annapolis they faced a problem they hadn’t before- in Chicago they were known, and no one would tell their secrets. At Grand Matagamon, no one cared, and the few isolated people in the surrounding area didn’t interact with them at all.

In Annapolis, no one was looking out for them. A couple years in they started silently worrying about how long it would take until someone noticed they weren’t getting any older, before they’d have to go search for new jobs and a new home.

They had a little time, they’d thought, and no one mentioned the real estate and job listings for Richmond and Philadelphia and Pittsburgh and even Nashville and Toronto, somehow, that would pop up on couches or tables every so often.

Ludwig and Feliciano started commuting for museum jobs at the Smithsonian that they could easily use for experience points in getting employment in cities across the country. Berwald started fixing farm equipment instead of boats, and Timo sold hunting rifles and handguns.

-

The Mutant Scare with the Brotherhood attack on the UN Summit coincided almost perfectly with the outbreak of the War on Terror, and suddenly there was suspicion _everywhere,_ about everyone, in a way that had the four of them relieving unpleasant memories. The first discussion about actually moving away happened in the early days of 2002, and privately they each entertained the thought of going back to Europe, to settle or roam as they wished and enjoy the years before the Euro Crisis, then perhaps wait it out in Germany or Sweden or hop the Atlantic again and get to know Canada better.

Feliciano pinged government searches for suspicious employees two weeks into the new year, and the investigation got shunted back and forth between departments for a few months while the FBI said they didn’t have the means to get the background information and the CIA retaliated with the fact that fraud wasn’t in their jurisdiction; until finally an Assistant Director had had _enough_ of the case files and complaints going back and forth across his desk in this latest government agency pissing contest, stopped all paperwork traffic, and spent an afternoon assigning cases.

Feliciano’s file went in a slim stack that eventually made its way to SHIELD Headquarters.

-

Berwald was making dinner when Feliciano and Ludwig got back from work one early May evening.

“We were followed home,” Ludwig announced, and everyone exchanged looks and when he continued with: “Government car,” things just fell into motion.

Maybe this wasn’t their world and maybe _technically_ the people of Germany and Sweden and Finland and northern Italy weren’t _their_ people but they were _still_ Nations on foreign soil, and now the foreign government was involved. This was a power display, and the edge in the air clearly said that they weren’t going to let some agency just try to walk into their lives and intimidate them- they were _better_ than that, and they were going to _prove_ it.

They were _better._

So Berwald slowed down the cooking a little and made a quick pot of coffee, which Ludwig took a generous mug of and went and sat _very pointedly_ with on the porch, watching the car parked a few houses down across the street. Feliciano brought some trays and extra chairs out while Timo snuck out the back door, hopped the neighbor’s fence, and emerged on the street behind them. Inside, Berwald counted to himself, and when he was fairly certain Timo had managed to cut back to the street behind the neighbors across their street, cross a few more property lines, and was lurking in the gardens of said neighbors, unseen, he called Feliciano back in and they set dinner up outside on the porch.

-

Timo waited for the food to get set up, then casually emerged from the garden like it was totally normal for him to be hiding in the neighbor’s backyards to spy on the people spying on them, sauntered up to the car, and knocked on the passenger’s side window.

The agents in the car jumped violently, and the man in the passenger’s seat looked put-out for a moment before carefully rolling the window down.

“You know,” Timo said, all cheer. “If you wanted to talk to us, it would be more convenient for everyone if you did it over dinner.”

The agent rolled up the window again, there was a heated discussion from within the car, and then the agents accepted that they’d been outmaneuvered and exited.

Dinner conversation was pleasant enough and managed to maintain a decent semblance of getting to know some new acquaintances rather than an interrogation. They avoided answering most of the questions except for giving a firm, outright _‘No’_ to _‘Are you mutants?’_ and a _‘Yes’_ to _‘So… you all know each other awfully well’_. Feliciano started the _‘Do They Know Our Languages’_ Game and for a while the porch was a mess of German Italian Swedish Russian Finnish Latin French Spanish Ukrainian Polish Turkish Arabic Old Norse while the agents sat a little awkwardly and contributed a few lines where they could.

The agents left after a couple hours.

-

In the morning, the agents filed an embarrassing field report about the mission, which flagged the four of them as _‘Suspect; but Potentially Useful’_ and earned them very thin, individual folders in Phil Coulson’s office filing cabinets in a drawer labeled _‘Specialty Agents Required’_. A corresponding sticky note in his schedule reminded him to find someone with free time who needed their information-gathering skills kept in practice.

The Annapolis house was vacant by that afternoon.


	6. Granmercy Park

It took a decade of zig-zagging across the American-Canadian border, pulling odd jobs and tinkering and seasonal pay that never saw the inside of a bank, until they felt secure enough to really settle down again. New York City was a risky choice- urban legends of vigilantes and that Harlem incident meant SHIELD almost certainly had a presence there; but there was a very public mad-genius superhero out in Malibu and rumors about New Mexico that they’d definitely be focusing on now, and it was easier to hide in the city.

By the time they’d made it south of the Canadian border and finished the cross-country roadtrip, New York City was in ruins from an alien invasion.

It was a distinctly unpleasant surprise.

But they had all the money they’d saved when they pulled everything out of the bank and the stock market when they left Annapolis, and there was a good portion of their savings that had still been in Canadian dollars that had worth a surprising amount more in American ones when they stopped at a currency exchange in Minnesota, plus the odd-job money they’d never really spent on motels or houses or apartments or home-cooked food-

Against all odds, they arrived in New York City twice as rich as they’d been a decade ago in Annapolis, and property prices in the city were in a marked slump. People were desperate to sell and _get out_ in the aftermath of the attack, and damaged buildings sold lower than they should have as an incentive to get people to fix them up.

So with their savings and some financial and physical assistance from Matties who’d done well after venturing into the wider world, they got enough money and mutant-powered reconstruction help to fix up an old building in the outer areas of the destruction zone without anyone taking undue notice. It was a good location that would have been torn down otherwise, but with their resources, within a year they had the top floor as living space for the four of them, two apartments each on the next two floors for rent, and a the only functioning restaurant-type establishment with coffee for ten blocks in any direction.

They did very good business.

-

With good business came a reputation.

As the city slowly rebuilt and there were more food options, some of the clientele trickled away. Six months or so in, they had a set reputation. The Trattoria was where you went for good cheap food and coffee, and if you didn’t want conversation you didn’t have to give any. There was beer after nine and if Feli was on bar duty and you paid a little extra you could get some good wine instead. The rainbow and black-and-white X flag stickers in the bottom corner of the window warded the intolerant off.

They got renters- Mikaia and Anat took one all for themselves, Ailill had grabbed the one across the hall, Jovanovic actually worked in The Trattoria, and Mirek was from Matagoman, and working on an associate’s degree at a community college. Mikaia and Anat negotiated for a private night at the restaurant to throw a birthday party and ended up engaged, and The Trattoria added private functions to their offerings when word got around.

-

Genie Night rotated weekly to accommodate everyone’s schedules as well as possible, on a consistent rota of Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday.

The first time Mirek had seen that on the weekly chalkboard schedule he’d laughed and laughed and dashed back upstairs to call Ghadir at Matagoman and congratulate her- her Positive Slang Campaign was going to catch on in the big city. Word spread from Matagoman as people called friends and acquaintances, and New York’s first-ever mutants-only event without shades of illegality had a decent turn out.

It was gratifying for the four of them to stay up all night, watching people come in and out and realize it was because one good thing they’d done nearly fifty years ago now had sparked a community like this. As the months wore on they got letters from old Matties who owned or who had friends who owned establishments that were now holding Genie Nights. One letter from San Francisco had a newspaper cutting from a community center advertising a ‘Genie Night Group’.

And maybe they gloated, just a little, when Timo overheard a little cluster of probably-really-teenagers toning down their GY-ness and whispering about homework they were putting off to come see what mutant life outside Westchester was like.

-

In the heat of the Avengers and aliens and press releases about Asgard and Canada declaring in no uncertain terms that they would _never_ rely on foreign nationals for defense and forming Alpha Flight and Reed Richards’ disastrous space experiment with highly public consequences, and the debate about whether the maybe-real Daredevil and the definitely-real X-Men and Spiderman were going to get in on the growing list of public superheroes, and the widespread destruction of most of Manhattan from the bottom end of Park Avenue straight through most of Midtown that was driving people across the rivers to Brooklyn and the Bronx and Hoboken, nobody really noticed how the demographics of the slowly-rebuilding Granmercy Park were changing.

The Matties all knew about The Trattoria- their founders had been out of reliable touch for some fifteen years or so, and it was wonderful to have a permanent address for them again. The rest of the mutant community was a loose but ever-tightening and growing network around the focal points of Matagoman, Westchester, and the Brotherhood- but the Brotherhood was dropping members in droves post-Alcatraz and Westchester still hadn’t recovered from the loss of what amounted to all but one of their senior members to death or business elsewhere- so what the Matties knew, the mutants knew.

New York was a dangerous city now and Manhattan its worst borough, and New Yorkers of all stripes were fleeing where they could, the affluent trading for a new apartment in Boston or Chicago or San Francisco or Los Angeles or Seattle or a house in the suburbs somewhere, the corporations were talking about relocating entirely, and everyone who couldn’t or wouldn’t move was stuck looking at a steady flow of money and jobs and services _out_ of Manhattan where before everything came _in._

Prices were low and New York, city and state, was desperately trying to get people to come- so for people who could be dangerous _back,_ who could fit in with the new strange-

Perhaps it could become home.

The Trattoria was at East 20th and Irving Place, across the street from the eponymous Granmercy Park and a block and a half from the NYPD Police Academy, who were making frantic calls for more officers to replace the ones lost in the invasion with the barely-an-implication that anyone ‘qualified by predisposition’ to handle extra-human threats was _more_ than welcome.

So the Matties moved in, radiating out from 3rd Avenue and East 20th a block down from Ludwig and Feliciano and Berwald and Timo, at first mostly to sign with NYPD, and slowly they dragged the others with them.

Brotherhood sympathizers and ex-members slunk into the area by Stuyvesant Square opposite Beth Israel; and the Westies took the north corner after Ambassador McCoy secured some funding through a few charitable organizations in the name of Professor Ororo Munroe to buy up the remains of Gramercy Park Hotel. It opened with little fanfare as The Scott Summers’ Day School later that year.  

There was a bit of a stir when unmarried professional and academic types suddenly began to move into the southwest corner of Granmercy- the four blocks between Irving Place and 3rd Avenue, bound by East 14th in the south and East 18th in the north. Timo spent a day down there, watching, and came back in the evening saying he’d seen some old dinner guests amongst the new move-ins.

The Trattoria put it around that the southwest corner was SHIELD territory, and the four blocks that ended up known as ‘Eagle’s Nest’ kept to itself so long as the rest of Granmercy did the same.

\--

The southeast corner became another story entirely. Suspicious antique shops and New Age stores started cropping up on the block directly south of Beth Israel. The psychics and nature- and energy-sensitive mutants started to grumble and take different routes to work.

Feliciano looked at a map, eyed the way the Immaculate Conception Parish was catty-corner to this strangeness suspiciously, and took a morning off to snoop. He kept his crucifix prominent and when he’d spotted two occult bookstores within five buildings of each other, he simply sat down on the stoop of one and waited for someone to say something.

After a dozen or so people had eyed him suspiciously as they walked past and made discreet warding-off-evil hand gestures from various cultures, Feliciano just shook his head and started making passing remarks about people’s fashion sense in Latin Vulgate.

When someone insulted him back in passable scholarly Latin and then threw in a bit of Biblical-era Aramaic, Feliciano walked into the nearest New Age store, bought some holly and aniseed oil and spent the rest of the time until lunch daubing the oil on door handles and making the _mano figo_ at people who looked like they might try and stop him.

-

By the end of the week he and Timo had made The Trattoria as magic-proof as they could and handed out instructions for basic magical protection to everybody in the neighborhood who’d stopped by.

When people started calling the area ‘Witches’ Corner’, a tall, older man in a good suit showed up at the shop.

-

The moment Stephen Strange walked into The Trattoria, he felt deeply, _unfairly_ misinformed.

_He_ had been told by the new Granmercy magical enclave that the mutants had found out about the magic and started to get antsy. Strange had had a plan for when this happened as soon as he’d been told that the New York area’s magical community was going to make a go at an enclave- there hadn’t been one in the area since the Revolution. The roads near Bleeker Street in Greenwich around his Sanctum was too crowded to accommodate new residents on the scale that was being planned; but Granmercy had space and, most importantly, a growing population of none other than _mutants._

If Homo magi had to pick between Homo sapiens and Homo sapiens superior, well, Homo sapiens superior would win. Mutants knew about weird and were less likely to react to magic with violence. They knew about being hunted for your abilities.

So when people had come down to Greenwich to complain about the stranger who insulted people in Latin Vulgate and knew the easiest ways to ward off magic, and then informed him that the stranger was _in fact_ one of the most well-known mutants in the entire neighborhood and a community leader to boot, Strange had put on one of his I Am A Medical Doctor suits and taken the twenty-five minute walk up to Granmercy Park; expecting to meet this strangely-knowledgeable mutant, have a nice polite talk over some coffee about how the enclave meant no one any harm and had actually chosen this area on purpose so they would be amongst allies, and leave with a new acquaintance and an in on a helpful community.

What he _got_ was a full-body blast of magical energy as soon as he opened the door, rather like the sudden wind when a door in winter was opened to a building kept on high heat.  

No _mutant_ gave off that sort of energy- the Sorcerer Supreme wasn’t even sure _he_ did. The power of a Homo magi was tightly maintained, controlled, and regulated- even the magical fits untrained mages under emotional pressure threw sometimes, when they were just growing into their power, didn’t feel like this.

This was magic of the caliber and type of powerful elementals, intrinsic to the point of instinct, with no conscious component reining it in. The energy in the shop swirled and dipped and spilled through doorways and cut wide swathes in the air and walls, and for a few moments Doctor Strange wondered how _no one_ in the Granmercy enclave had felt this, how _he_ hadn’t felt it, even out in Greenwich- in his magical sense, this building was lit up like it was on _fire._

Then his senses got past the shock of suddenly trying to process the _sheer amount_ of power, and he realized just how _strange_ it was.

He’d thought of it as elemental magic before, and that wasn’t exactly _wrong_ as… not quite _right._

Elemental magic was tied to the land and the natural processes of the universe. This magic was tied to something natural, to be sure; and while there was a weak link to the basic matter and framework of the earth in the same manner as the Oreads, the mountain nymphs, and a distinct undertone of Hyleoroi, the protectors of the woods; the majority of the power was something else entirely.

Strange couldn’t place it. It felt so intimately familiar but he _couldn’t-_

“Hello, can I help you with something?”

The young man who asked was just that- a human man.

“I’m here to see the management,” he managed to say, still mostly caught up in the strangeness around him. It didn’t feel like sun on his skin the way light magic did or leave the bitter taste of dark magic in his mouth so at least it had no _ill_ intent, but that in turn just meant it was a deep well of untapped potential and what if someone got their hands on it and _twisted-_

“...And who are you?” the waiter asked with a hint of suspicion.

“Doctor Stephen Strange. The Granmercy residents south of Ben Israel asked me to come speak on their behalf.”

The waiter fingered a holly sprig pinned to his apron and told him he should come around back to the offices.

-

Feliciano felt like undried oil paint and tar when Strange shook his hand and he smelled of brine and ignited gunpowder. He looked like gold and light through glass and his voice made the sound of canvas sails and hempen ropes in the wind when he spoke. Ludwig was steel and sunshine through iron bars and when he got too close Strange smelled pine forests and winter fires; his skin rich wet earth and his words the rumble of industry and thunder through the closed windows of a library.

Berwald gave him tea instead of coffee and the smell of spring grass and sawdust was his, not the drink’s, and the heat from the cup couldn’t ward off the sharp watery chill from the brush of his fingers. He was candles and smoked meat at Midwinter and though he didn’t speak Strange could hear the creaking weight of glaciers and stone in his lungs and throat keeping the words down. Timo made up for his silence and it was the crack of ice and howl of blizzard winds, the scent of fur and leather thick on his breath as he laughed and it hurt to look at him, he shimmered and twisted and scintillated with bleeding nighttime rainbows and there was sparking heat, static electricity and plasma, sunk in his flesh.

And there was red, everywhere, dark and luminous and thumping muffled tangled in time; in blood of birth and life and death and the souls that never truly left-

The Sorcerer Supreme floated through the talk, caught up in the entrancing, terrifying play of energy that he realized in a hazy way was too contained to feel at any distance; too concentrated around these beings playing at something basically human, wearing a form that was simultaneously inner truth and outward lies.

He made words and sentences and reassurances and small talk while less than half there and he coasted out of The Trattoria and it wasn’t until the door closed politely behind him that he snapped back to himself with sudden, sharp jerk bordering on pain and he felt ineffably empty inside, a dull hole inside where once, there was something; or perhaps always should have been something. 

Stephen Strange half-spun and stared, reeling and wide-eyed and blankly, back at the building. He realized distantly that he was weeping silently, and all his worries about trouble and others accessing the magic were gone, dissipated; and he raised a hand to his face then found himself leaning against The Trattoria, hands on the doorframe and hands bowed. Shakily, he drew a triceps, three oþal runes in one, against the wall with one tear-wet finger, magic burning the shape into the brick.

In the weeks to come, the residents of Witches’ Corner would appear silently and leave little gifts along the join of the building and sidewalk- a small sachet of herbs, a dish of blessed water, a handcarved charm, a semi-precious stone- and retrace Strange’s triceps.

Not a one of them ever ventured inside.


	7. Inhuman

Their lives ended the day Charles Xavier and Erik Lensherr walked into Granmercy together, against all odds, alive and powered.

-

They came into the neighborhood from the southeast, cutting across the intersection of East 18th and Irving straight between the Matties and Eagle’s Nest. There were mutants everywhere, of course, so then the Westies heard about Xavier _alive_ and the Bros heard about Lensherr _powered_ and the entire neighborhood descended on Granmercy Park where the Westies saw Lensherr _powered_ and the Bros saw Xavier _alive_ and everyone saw them _together-_

The NYPD Academy down the street was the first responder, and the cadets waded straight into the crowd in an attempt to set up a police line.

Then SHIELD heard from Eagle’s Nest and sent word to the Avengers to suit up and _get down there before they start a war,_ and Summer’s Day School called Westchester and the X-Men replied with an en route, and Doctor Strange got a barrage of panicked magical calls from Witches’ Corner, and the Fantastic Four picked up the massive energy signature of so much mutant and magical power on Richard’s scanners and went rushing towards it; and everyone arrived at once to see a riot on the verge of breaking out.

\--

The Avengers came in from the sky, as always- Iron Man and Thor under their own power, the others on a pair of air cycles Stark had patterned off of the salvaged Chitauri technology.

Granmercy Park had a perfectly-circular, meters-wide clear area around the fountain in its center, where Xavier and Lensherr stood. The X-Men were trying to cut through the packed, seething crowd filling the rest of the Park from the north, Ororo calling for Xavier, while the Richards and his family were working their way up from the south.

_‘On the roof of the school,’_ Hawkeye said over the comm. Black Widow had dropped off of the air cycle she shared with him when they passed over the trees in the Park. _‘Clear shot to both targets.’_

_‘Keep it that way,’_ Iron Man told him. _‘We might have to end this fast. Keep it clearly non-lethal. We don’t want to set anyone off.’_

_‘I’m going in to try talking things out,_ ’ Captain America said, and tumbled out of the air and landed, crouched, in the middle of the clear area just as Black Widow vaulted out of the tree cover.

The four men stalking the cleared area turned towards them immediately and Thor could see a warrior’s reflexes in all of them, he could _feel-_

_“HOLD!”_ he bellowed frantically, the feel of foreign, ancient, _familiar_ power making panic bloom in his chest as he dropped from the sky between his shieldmates and the man-shaped beings, hands outstretched in both directions in a wordless plea for everyone to stand down.

Captain America paused and Black Widow followed his lead. Out of sight, the rest of Avengers froze and the two other groups started to slow, hesitant; everyone waiting to see what had prompted his outburst.

Thor turned his entire attention to the beings.

“My deepest and most _sincere_ apologies, esteemed guardians,” he said with as much formality as he could muster, slipping into Allspeak instead of English- there was _no room_ for miscommunication here, he could feel the breadth and depth of the power they contained as strongly as he could feel the electric currents that humans channeled and stored everywhere.

He could feel Midgard wrapped in thin tendrils around their bones, holding them down; behind it thick roots leading _away_ and _out_ and _within_ to some other plane-

And down to their very _cores_ these beings resonated to the pulse of human hearts and the flow of human thoughts and the currents of human breaths and pulsing of human souls they were human human human so human as to be _not_ to be more and less and entirely incomparable and in their cores was wrote in intentions so strong they _screamed_ at him

_PEOPLE_

  _MINE_

_PROTECT_

and the source was far away, on that other plane; but they carried the imprint of it so strongly in the weight of their beings that it shook Thor to think of how they must be in their own world.

The only comfort he had was that _guardian_ and _community_ were intrinsic in their every moment of existence, and if he could keep himself and his shieldmates and allies from becoming threats to their charges, they would remain unharmed.

“Our intentions were not to intrude!” he continued hastily. “We came not to harm, but in hopes of preventing violence!”

The second-shortest one just looked puzzled.

“Well… of course you did?”

“We’re handling it fine, thanks,” the shortest one said tersely. His hands were twitching every so often in a way Thor had learned from observing SHIELD agents meant he was used to going for a gun in tense situations.

Thor wondered why.

The other two were built as though brothers, and Thor had a moment’s sadness about that thought before one approached him.

“Your presence isn’t really helping,” he said quietly, eyeing Iron Man in the sky. “This is our business.”

He gestured to the assembled mob, who were radiating confusion.

“These are your people?” Thor asked. It seemed strange, these beings rooted as they were _somewhere else,_ but only the stupid or the desperate argued with guardian spirits.

“In a way,” the other being replied, and Thor turned to face him and found himself at the end of a searching look.

It took a moment, the murmurs of the mob, and the utter shock on the face of a strange man Thor took for Tony at first glance but hadn’t seen before, but then he realized what had _actually_ been said.

“You speak the language of those humans who once worshipped us!” he exclaimed, astounded. “Truthfully, how long have you lived?”

_‘Thor, what the **hell** is going on?’ _ Iron Man asked over the comm.

“I _knew_ it!” Captain America exclaimed loudly, and everyone looked at him. “How are you four still alive and looking the same as you did in Buchenwald?”

“Could ask you the same question,” the second-shortest one snapped after a moment.

“I remember you being a lot more cheerful, Feli,” Steve Rogers said, scowling intensely in suspicion. “Even when you were stabbing people in the back.”

“You _know_ these people?” Black Widow demanded.

Steve had raised his shield some.

“Bucky called you angels-”

It took Thor a moment to remember what those were and another to contemplate it. He had heard angels spoken of as guardians and warriors-

“-but I’m not so sure you aren’t some kind of demons instead.”

“Ang- you don’t mean the _East Front Angels,_ ” Black Widow said in disbelief, words almost lost in the din of outraged shouts from the mob at Captain America’s words.

The tall one who spoke Old Norse waved a hand at them to calm down, and the tension grew but the noise subsided.

“Captain,” Xavier said, a little stiffly. “These men have been running a program for homeless mutants for decades-”

“All due respect, sir, the SSR had them pegged as another attempt at Dr. Erskine’s serum-”

“They’re not human,” Stephen Strange interrupted.

“That’s derogatory phrasing for mu-” Xavier began.

“No-”

Feliciano appeared suddenly in his face.

“I know what you’re about to say,” he hissed in a Latin so old Strange’s mental interpretation of it was a few words behind Feliciano’s speech. “And unless you want to know what we can really do I would advise you to _back off_ -”

He’d forgotten the telepath.

“ _Homo sapiens, Homo sapiens superior, Homo magi_ ,” Xavier picked up, and the crowd went silent to hear his words. “All of the rest of us here are human.”

He looked at the four of them.

“So what are _you?_ ”

-

 “That’s none of your damn business!” Timo snapped loudly and glared furiously at Xavier. He spread his arms wide to gesture at Granmercy. “ _This_ is what you care about- a peaceful mutant community! Mutants working with non-mutants! Safety! Acceptance!”

He pointed at the NYPD cadets.

“You have the first steps here! _This_ is what we’ve done, we’ve _helped_ people-”

Iron Man had landed in the park.

“That doesn’t mean we have to _trust_ you-”

Stephen Strange tuned the rest of the developing argument out and sidled up next to Thor.

“Your actions tell me you know something of what they are,” he said quietly in clumsy Old Norse. “I have tried to discover it, but their energies, while hauntingly familiar… elude me.”

“Aye,” Thor acknowledged in a murmur. “They are not of this world, nor any of the other Nine Realms. They are-”

He gestured vaguely.

“- _other._ Guardian spirits, though I know not what or where of.”

“Guardian spirits- the Captain said they were called angels, but I _know_ angels-”

Thor parted his lips to say that of course they were not angels, they were too _human_ \- and the thought stopped him short.

“You say these beings feel familiar?” he asked.

“Intensely so.”

Thor pondered for a moment, glancing between the guardian spirits and the people they had claimed in this world.

“What,” he asked slowly. “Are the purpose of mutants?”

Strange looked at him, puzzled.

“Science theorizes mutations as an adaption, a way for a species to develop better ways to survive and defend themselves against the larger world. Documented cases of mutations in humans of the same type as within the last century have been historically very scarce-”

Thor thought of the things humanity had only come to realize in that time frame, of the things that were _out there,_ and started laughing quietly at himself, hand to his forehead in ruefulness at his and everyone’s _blindness._

 “What?” Strange asked, sounding irritated.

“Oh, Sorcerer,” Thor said with a hint of good humor. “What is the expression you use here on Midgard- _‘the fishes do not know the water they swim in’_?”

He waved a hand at Timo and Berwald and Feliciano and Ludwig.

“In their world, they are humanity’s protection against the other, the vaster, the more powerful, the inhuman- just as _here,_ your mutants are so.”

Strange stared at him, then at the four men- and for a moment he looked like he would protest Thor’s analysis of the situation, but then realization and a kind of awe dawned.

“They-” he began; but then words failed him as the enormity of the concept fully realized itself.

“They are human and other,” Thor provided. “Not in the way of your mutants, human with the powers of other; but the halfway between.”

He thought of the sheer intrinsic power he’d felt in them.

“Other made of human, bound to it.”

“Human and inhuman,” Strange murmured.

“A fair approximation,” Thor agreed, and strode over to Captain America and Iron Man, still embroiled in what was now basically a shouting match with the… he did not know the proper words for what they were.

“Hold, friends,” he said kindly, placing a hand each on their shoulders. “This is an argument you cannot win.”

“You’d be surprised what I can win,” Tony shot back.

“Not this time, Anthony. Even you cannot win an argument with yourself,” Thor told him, and turned to Timo and the others.

To everyone’s surprise, he bowed.

“Thor Odinsson, Prince of Asgard, Avenger and Protector of Midgard, greets thee, Guardians, and seeks to know of your proper titles.”

He was using Allspeak again- formality and propriety demanded it.

The four exchanged looks and an understanding was reached.

Feliciano stepped forward and bowed in return, opting for Venetian, his first language.

“Feliciano Vargas, _Repubblica italiana, veneziano_ ; once _Regno d’Italia, veneziano_ ; once _Regno Lombardo-Veneto, veneziano; Serenìsima Respùblica de Venexia_ ; once _Venetiarum Civitas_ ; once the Veneti, greets you in return, Prince Odinsson. I speak to you as the eldest of the Nations here, having seen at least twenty-three centuries. May we retire to a more private space?”

“As you wish,” Thor said, and turned to the crowd.

“We will speak!” he announced in his best speech-giving voice, projecting all the way to the edges of the park. “And, upon the end of our commiserations, return!”

Berwald and Ludwig and went from Mattie to Mattie at the front of the crowd, quietly giving instructions.

Timo got up on the rim of the fountain.

**_“GO HOME!”_** he bellowed. **_“THERE’S NOTHING FOR YOU TO DO HERE!”_**

Slowly, the residents of Granmercy began to disperse. Feliciano offered Thor his hand, and they disappeared to The Trattoria. The other Nations followed, leaving the rest of the Avengers, the X-Men, the Fantastic Four, Charles Xavier, Erik Lensherr, and Dr. Strange alone in the park.

_“Well,”_ Reed Richard’s said, clearing his throat awkwardly. “Introductions?”


	8. Thought and Memory

Feliciano sorted out coffee and snacks for a proper hosting while the others locked the doors and closed the blinds for more privacy and selected a table.

When everyone was situated, Thor spoke.

“May I know the rest of you, now that we are away from prying ears?”

“Timo Väinämöinen, _Suoma tasavalta_ ; once _Suomen suuriruhtinaskunta_ ; once _Österland_ ; once the Finns, greets thee, Prince Odinsson,” Finland said, cementing the order of introductions in descending age.

“Berwald Oxenstierna, _Konungariket Sverige;_ once the Swedes, greets thee, Prince Odinsson.”

It took Germany a moment to pick up on the form the introductions were taking- he hadn’t had nearly as much training and practice in the courtly aspects of foreign relations as the others, and the overtly-formal tone sounded silly to him.

“Ludwig Beilschmidt, _Bundesrepublik Deutschland_ ; once _Deutsches Reich_ ; once _Norddeutscher Bund_ , greets thee, Prince Odinsson.”

“It is truly a great honor to meet you all,” Thor said gravely, and had some coffee.

He looked down at the cup after he’d swallowed.

“This is surprisingly rich.”

“That’s because we make _real_ coffee here,” Feliciano said with more than a little pride. “Americans _refuse_ to do it properly.”

“Ah. You have my compliments.”

“Thank you.”

“How did you know?” Finland asked, cradling his cup in his hands. “What we were?”

“I am not human; they were,” Thor said. “Neither of us could look past the familiarities we saw reflected in you until the Sorcerer and I exchanged thoughts.”

Timo sank back into his seat with a little huff. Berwald laid a hand on his arm.

“We can go t’Europe finally,” he said. “Now that they know we’re diff’rent.”

“You will not go home?” Thor inquired.

“We don’t know how,” Veneziano told him.

“We don’t even know how we arrived here,” Germany added.

“Ah, a conundrum of cosmic proportions, then,” Thor said, and a thought struck him. “That has, perhaps, a simpler fix than expected.”

-

The four of them hunted down the deeds and titles to their physical and monetary possessions and drew up contracts to sign over everything to Grand Matagoman. The Trattoria was to be managed by Jovanovic, who also got the living space on the fourth floor in the event that they did not return.

A few letters were written and a few calls made to say goodbye- if things worked out, they would be returning home; and if they didn’t, then kind words had been exchanged between friends and nearly-family.

Then they returned to the Park with Thor, who staved off a barrage of questions to say: “We are journeying to Asgard in hopes of returning these unwilling travelers home!”

“Do we at least get the satisfaction of learning who you are?” Charles Xavier asked.

They exchanged looks.

“Here,” Timo said. “We’re the East Front Angels, the men who saved hundreds of thousands in the war and came to America, founding Grand Matagoman and taking care of those no one else would take. We served as the foundation for the growth of a non-militarized mutant community.

There; at home- I am the Republic of Finland.”

“The Kingdom of Sweden.”

“The Italian Republic.”

“The Federal Republic of Germany.”

“Heimdall!” Thor called to the sky as this universe’s protectors of humanity tried to process what they’d just been told. “Bring us to Asgard!”

The Bifröst opened.

-

Asgard was grand, and Berwald assumed spokesmanship for the group by unspoken consensus. If not for his clothes, he would fit in perfectly. Ludwig was feeling a distinct kinship, which made him feel odd; and Timo felt at least secure enough in his knowledge to call himself a tourist in the privacy of his mind.

Feliciano was just completely lost.

Odin’s throne room was deeply impressive, but unintimidating for them. Thor explained their situation, and Odin’s single eye looked them over critically, Huginn and Muninn watching them restlessly from atop the throne before hopping down to Odin’s shoulders to impart their findings.

Odin stood.

“Very well, Guardians of Humans,” he said. “Let us see what can be done.”

-

The lighting was cold and hard- unwelcoming.  Huginn and Muninn cast flickering shadows as they flew from person to person to perch.

“We have repaired the Bifröst; and dare not explore its uses much further,” Odin told them. “The potential to use it as a weapon is too strong, and experience has proven that no amount of hiding will keep it out of the hands of those who cover power. But, if it is used for this- it will be irretrievable to all who in this universe seek it. There is nothing that can follow where this will take you.”

He turned to them, fixing them with a sharp gaze.

“Have you a safe place to store this device? A person you can entrust this to without fear?”

Silence echoed in the room.

“Gilbert,” Ludwig said finally. “The people I must answer to have no hold over him; and he will not betray trust on something like this. He can hide it, and no one will get its location from him by force or coercion.”

“Very well,” Odin conceded. “Think, then, Guardians, of your people and your homes. Focus on your beings. Fix it in your mind and feel your people and _reach-_ ”

\--

It was near midnight in Berlin, and Prussia hadn’t really slept in two weeks.

Nations did not disappear so suddenly, with no warning, unless they truly died.

The four of them had been together and Sweden and Finland were still countries and Gilbert was still Prussia not Germany and Romano was still split between Naples and Rome so they _had_ to be alive.

Ludwig _had_ to be alive.

A hard blue light bloomed suddenly from beside him, and when his vision cleared a little he was crying.

“Oh _thank God-_ Lutz, Lutz, _bruderlein_ , you’re back; are you okay did someone take you if this was a _joke-_ ”

_“Gilbert.”_

That was too desperate a word, to staggeringly relieved a look, to forceful a hug, for this to have been a joke.

Too much emotion for only two weeks.

“Lutz, _where-_ ”

Prussia paused, hoping he wouldn’t regret whatever answer he’d get.

“Where have you _been?_ ”

Germany forced himself to keep _not crying_ for a little longer and handed his brother the Tesseract.

“Gilbert, you have to hide this. Somewhere far away, where no one will think to look and accidentally coming across it is next to impossible.  And you _cannot_ tell us where it is- we _cannot_ have an answer if we are ever asked about it.”

Prussia gave him a long look and took it from him, carefully.

“Okay. But when I come back, you’re telling me what happened. We’ve been worried sick about you all. I… I’ve missed you.”

“So have I.”


End file.
